Comptroller Stringer Delivers Testimony at the New York State Financial Control Board Annual Meeting

(New York, NY) — Today, New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer testified before the New York State Financial Control Board Annual Meeting. Full text of Comptroller Stringer’s testimony, as prepared for delivery, is available below.

Comptroller Stringer also released a report on New York City’s Fiscal Year 2022 Adopted Budget. According to the Comptroller’s report, the $98.72 billion FY 2022 Adopted Budget reflects the recovery in the local economy and the improving fiscal outlook of the City from both the economic outlook and from budget relief provided by Federal stimulus funding. However, while the economy has improved, vaccine hesitancy and the rapid spread of the Delta variant of the COVID virus in many parts of the country pose a near-term risk to the ongoing recovery– particularly in industries such as travel, tourism and entertainment. To read the Comptroller’s full report on New York City’s FY 2022 Adopted Budget, click here.

Thank you and good afternoon.

I’m pleased today to join my colleagues in government, Mayor de Blasio, Comptroller DiNapoli, and State Budget Director Mujica, and the esteemed private members of the Financial Control Board, Bill Thompson, Rossana Rosado, and Steve Cohen.

Last year, I began my remarks by noting that we were traversing perhaps the most challenging budgetary circumstances in the history of the Financial Control Board.

Less than four months before last year’s meeting, the State and the City had shut down all non-essential businesses, and issued stringent stay-at-home orders, in order to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and protect public health. Our economy, and our tax revenues, were in free fall.

Remarkably, here we are, just a year later, meeting in person, to certify a budget that was balanced thanks to an unprecedented infusion of emergency federal assistance, and $5.8 billion more in tax revenues last year than predicted at the time.

We will never forget the terrible losses we’ve suffered – 35,000 of our neighbors and loved ones dead, 900,000 jobs lost, thousands of businesses closed for good. Today, while we have a long road ahead, we are poised for recovery. The New York City of tomorrow will be different from the New York City that existed a year and a half ago.

Thanks to the work of President Biden, Majority Leader Schumer, and Speaker Pelosi, we have the resources we need to build a reinvigorated, more equitable, dynamic New York City for the future.

In fact, studies show that the huge infusions of government aid across the country will cut poverty nearly in half this year from pre-pandemic levels and push the share of Americans in poverty to the lowest level on record. These stimulus funds give us an incredible opportunity to lay the foundation upon which the future will be built.

There is much to be commended in the budget and financial plan. The City has strengthened its reserves, putting back $1.6 billion that it had planned to withdraw from the Retiree Health Trust Fund. And this year, the City made the first ever discretionary deposit of $500 million to the new Revenue Stabilization Fund.

The budget funds several new or expanded initiatives, such as Universal 3K, investments in classroom resources and mental health supports in our schools, improved services for seniors, and overhead reimbursements for the non-profits that were on the frontlines of the pandemic.

I commend the Mayor for his vision and commitment in proposing these programs. They will be important in helping to build a more just and equitable City. They represent a promise for the future.

But the budget and financial plan the Mayor has presented leaves me concerned about our ability to keep those promises. In short, we are creating new costs in the future, without having figured out how we’re going to pay for them all.

Our recovery faces many risks and uncertainties. How many office workers will commute into Midtown, Lower Manhattan, or Downtown Brooklyn every day? When will visitors come back to the City for business and tourism? How long will Wall Street continue its record earnings run? And most of all, when will the jobs come back for New Yorkers, and bring the unemployment rate back down toward the historic low we reached before the pandemic?

The truth is that none of us here today knows the answers to these questions. Even as we were preparing for this meeting, the Delta variant is changing health protocols – with potential consequences for the pace of recovery and reopening. We must ensure that our spending is sustainable even when stimulus funds run out.

In normal times, perhaps it’s possible to take a more relaxed view about future budget gaps–but these are not normal times, because we face so many uncertainties. That’s why we have to budget with more certainty. There are too many unknowns in our fiscal outlook. How will we pay for the billion dollars in new programs funded with the stimulus, when the stimulus funds are gone? How will we pay for the next round of labor contracts with our City workers? How will we pay for the $93 billion capital program — the biggest program ever?

All these challenges will have to be addressed, if we are going to have a strong foundation for the future.

One of my most important duties as comptroller has been as custodian and investment advisor to our pension funds. Today, I’m happy to be able to announce to our current and future retirees that this year our pension funds earned 25.8 percent on assets under management. In the last eight years, we’ve earned on average 9.1 percent – well above our target returns of 7 percent. This will help ensure retirement security for years to come, while helping to ease our future budget pressures. It has been an honor to work alongside the Trustees of the City Retirement Systems and the Mayor’s office to deliver strong results for our pensioners.

This is the mayor’s last FCB meeting, as it is mine as comptroller. We’ve disagreed plenty over the past eight years about budget matters. That’s the nature of the relationship between mayors and comptrollers – but I know that he and I both want the best for the people of our City. It has been the privilege of a lifetime to work with my colleagues here today for the past eight years, and an honor to join them in serving our fellow New Yorkers.

Thank you.

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